China has said it seized a Taiwanese boat, which had five crew members on board, for illegally fishing in its territorial waters on Tuesday night.
Taiwan has asked China to release the vessel and the men, two Taiwanese and three Indonesians which is being held at Weitou, a port in the south-east.
Taiwanese officials have confirmed to the Newsmen that the boat was seized inside China’s territorial waters, about 2.8 nautical miles (5.1km) off its coast. It was also operating during China’s annual summer-time fishing ban from May to August.
Spokesperson of the China Coast Guard, Liu Dejun, said the fishing vessel violated the fishing moratorium regulations and trawled illegally within the prohibited area.
He also accused it of using the wrong fishing gear and “damaging marine fishery resources”. Taiwan is yet to respond to these comments.
Such altercations have become common in the contested 110-mile strait that separates China and Taiwan.
China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own and the strait as its exclusive economic zone, although other countries that navigate these waters, such as Japan and the United States, do not recognize this. And the Chinese military has ramped up pressure on Taiwan in recent years.
Chinese authorities have seized and detained 17 Taiwan-registered vessels since 2003 for fishing during the summer-time ban, Taipei’s data shows. Taiwan too has detained five such boats from China this year alone.
Taiwanese authorities say they were alerted at 20:04 local time (12:04 GMT) on Tuesday by the captain that officers from two Chinese coast guard vessels had boarded and seized the fishing boat.
There was a brief but tense standoff as three Taiwanese coast guard ships were dispatched to rescue the boat. But they said they did not pursue them because there were four other Chinese coast guard ships approaching and they did not want to escalate tensions.
China’s coast guard says the Taiwanese used loudspeakers to demand the release of the fishing boat – and the Chinese did the same, asking the other side not to interfere.
“There were 40 to 50 fishing boats out at sea at the time. I don’t know why he targeted my boat,” the owner of the fishing vessel told local media. “This never happened before – in the past they would just chase you away if you got too close.”
